Playing Dear Esther ten years after its initial release didn’t dull its grandeur at all, and the truth is that Dear Esther is actually a very, very good game. In particular, Dear Esther-and the entire movement of games that it later inspired-is mesmerising in its repetitiveness, minimalism and single-mindedness to just let you walk. Without anything else to do, the environment thus wills you to look at it even more closely: a discarded bottle, the dead seagulls, the stalactites in the cavern. Dear Esther seems almost boring and devoid of activities to do at first, but without these distractions, you’re also made to meditate upon this isolation that you share with the narrator. Related: Neon Struct Is The Best Cyberpunk Immersive Sim You've Never PlayedĪs you walk, snippets of monologues are gradually unlocked, but you can walk at your pace-in fact, you’re encouraged to, given the absolutely glacial pace the man is walking at (there’s no option to run and jump). It’s very much an experience about the quiet act of walking and wandering, made up of the in-between scenes of the most rambunctious of first-person shooters when you’re traversing between combat zones and taking in the scenic sights of the landscapes. It’s a game about walking endlessly and slowly through a grassy, mountainous island and crystalline caves, diving into subterranean waterfalls, and ruminating over an apocalyptic future alone-purged of the usual cacophony of gunfire, the smouldering residuals of battles, and the trifling inclusion of illogical puzzles.
But Dear Esther is also deeply purgatorial.
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